Chapter 1: What is Thy Name

“What is thy name?” explores what the initial phases of transformation feel like on a personal level. As we learn and grow and transform, we are stretched in new ways. This is similar for teams going through transformation. Stay tuned throughout this 5 chapter series on transformation.

Have you ever felt that you no longer wanted to behave a certain way after observing an uncomfortable pattern in your life? Or that you wanted more, or different, without really knowing what that meant, concretely? This feeling of uncertainty, disconnection… That my friend, probably means that your life has built up to a shift and that you are already in the midst of some kind of transformation. Ta da!

Yes… but it hurts. Shredding your old skin, leaving behind what you had integrated as being « you », can hurt a lot and you’ll probably want it to stop.

What if you decided to endure it? Because you knew a bit more of your true self was emerging from the depth of your being? And what if you could trust that if you were going through this transformation, it was most probably because you were already ready for what was to come next?

I’ve been studying somatics in the Level I training and so I’d like to invite you into some somatic awareness. Would you allow yourself to sit with the momentary outburst of discomfort, relax your muscles and allow it to express itself in this transformation? Give attention to each part of your body from the space above your head to the space where body meets the ground. Giving yourself and your transformation space to be, so that you can move on to the next phase. You will probably discover new tools you hadn’t used (much) before: emotions and gut feeling for some, thoughts and will for others. You will have to trust them and trust yourself to be capable of leading you there. Wherever this « there » may be.

Empathy for yourself and patience are key to this journey. We will look deeper into that in Chapter 2. For now, I would like to invite you to watch this video, then close your eyes and feel how you feel inside.

Here’s the written version of the video:

What is thy name?

You look up, you look down
Your name is nowhere to be found

You are a reflection of a thousand faces
A broken mirror, a collection of traces
That the ghosts of your past stamped on your forehead

This is the name that they gave you
The name that you let slip under you skin
Like the cold and the mold settling into an empty house

You look up, you look down
You real name is nowhere to be found

One day the planets align
The poles become one

The reflection starts to move and step out of the mirror
And as the last hair enters the world
The mirror crumbles into fine dust

You want to call out and shout
But your voice remains speechless
The seed has been planted but
The notes have yet to sprout

You look up, you look down
Your name
Any name
Is nowhere to be found

When the planets aligned
A ray of sunlight touched your forehead and
Opened your third eye

The eye of the soul

But the cold and the mold still
Hold on to you
They entrap the things that
Mean life to you

So you shake and shake those things in a
Cry of despair
A cry that swirls into the wind
To become your first breath of
Fresh air

You shake and shake to get the cold and mold off
In the dark, you hear the head of your
Frozen glass muse
Roll off

The pain of piercing the pocket of blood
With every drop crashing on the floor
The pain grows wilder until
No more

You don’t see where you are going
Because your two eyes are wide shut

You will have to rely on your third eye and your
New, stranger, body
To walk through colours and shapes you had
Never seen before

Taste the unknown
Smell the uncertainty
Listen to the whispers of the
Silent wind
Dancing through the leaves

You look up, you look down
Your name is still nowhere to be found

But what is thy name?

For now, you don’t even see the contours of the letters it contains
But at least you know
For certain
It is not that name that used to lie
Where your third eye now stands

Diving into the unknown
Is the scariest of them all

As we dive
We break and dismantle
The familiar weight that once lashed our shoulders

Some of the pieces will be left behind
Some will remain and contain a
New golden liquor
Some will be reassembled
Not into another glass muse
But a lover of our own flesh

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